I am reminded of an exchange I saw on Inside Washington. The subject was some measure that was against gun control and generally for the right to bear arms. Jack Beatty and Nina Totenburg, noted that Bush had not been under any political pressure to support this measure and did not derive any obvious immediate benefit from it, supposed that he was tossing 'some red meat' to the true believers. Charles Krauthammer replied, "My dear incorrigible colleagues, you simply cannot believe that Bush ever does anything because he believes in it."
There are a lot of people on the left who simply cannot believe that anyone, let alone W, could go to war because they believe it is the right thing to do for the country. So it has to be arrogance, machismo, revenge, politics, oil, group hysteria (see Alter's column in the Boston Globe today?), any other reason will do.
Now of course, this being the real world, considerations of national advantage, politics and oil are not absent from the picture entirely. But I don't believe that any of them are the prime movers of affairs. |
